Prologue

Morning came to Tokyo in silver light and steam. Rainwater shimmered on the rooftops, curling down the gutters like veins of glass. Neon signs still hummed faintly from the night before, their colors bleeding into the puddles that reflected the awakening city.

A train glided across the horizon—a sleek, mana-powered serpent of steel—whispering across magnetic rails that thrummed with quiet blue light. Inside, office workers leaned against windows, half asleep, their devices hovering gently above their laps. Every pulse of magic in the carriage was like a heartbeat, steady and familiar. The city lived and breathed in rhythm with that pulse.

Mana—invisible, omnipresent—ran through Japan’s veins the way blood runs through the body. It powered hospitals, air filtration towers, autonomous cars, the glowing street signs that pulsed when you crossed at Shibuya. It made coffee machines hum and medicine heal. People didn’t call it “magic” anymore. It was just infrastructure.

That morning, for a moment, the world still believed it would last forever.

Then the lights began to flicker.

At first, no one noticed. The tremor of the train, the tapping of screens, the rush of wind through the tunnels masked the soft hiccups in the power lines. A businessman frowned at his mana watch as the projection blinked twice, then steadied again. Across the aisle, a little girl laughed as her floating game orb briefly lost color. Minor glitches — Tokyo was full of them.

But the glitches didn’t stop.

A barista in Akihabara hissed as her mana filter sparked, steam bursting from the pot.A healer at Shinagawa Hospital watched her patient’s recovery spell freeze mid-sigil, the glyphs dissolving into static light.An airship bound for Osaka descended sharply, its mana thrusters coughing black smoke before the pilot could reroute to auxiliary.

By 8:13 a.m., more than half the city’s mana circuits had gone dark.

News stations scrambled for explanations. A broadcaster’s voice stuttered between static bursts:

“We are currently experiencing a minor mana grid instability… repeat, nationwide… please remain—”

The feed cut.

In every district, people looked up. Billboards dimmed. The skyline, once laced with blue mana conduits like arteries, began to fade to gray.

In a shrine on the outskirts of Saitama, an old priest lit incense and whispered a morning prayer. The sacred flame that had burned for decades—a gift from the Empire’s founding mages—trembled once, then died, smoke curling into silence.

The priest blinked into the darkness. For the first time in his life, he could not feel the mana in the air.

He whispered, trembling, “Kami-sama… where did it go?”

The world didn’t answer.

At 8:45 a.m., panic began.

Mana-powered vehicles stalled on highways. Elevators locked mid-ascent. The shimmering barrier that shielded Tokyo Bay flickered out, and for a moment, the city felt naked—stripped of something it had always taken for granted.

Government channels issued emergency broadcasts, claiming a “temporary mana fluctuation.” MERC—the Magical Energy Regulation Commission—released a statement assuring citizens that reserves were being stabilized. But in their underground research hubs, MERC technicians were screaming.

Because the reserves weren’t stabilizing. They were emptying.

Meters that once glowed with infinite potential now spun backward into zero. The core crystals—once radiant —cracked like glass drained of color.

A young engineer named Shiori Hanada stared at the readings, her hands trembling. The graphs didn’t just fall; they collapsed. Every leyline connection, every city-wide conduit, every deep reservoir the world had ever tapped—gone.

“That’s impossible,” someone whispered.“Mana doesn’t just disappear.”“It regenerates—”

“Not anymore,” Shiori said.

And in that moment, the hum of the world stopped.

It wasn’t a sound anyone could hear—not truly. But every mage, every healer, every person born with even the faintest attunement felt it like a chill beneath the skin.

A silence deeper than quiet.A stillness that reached into the bones.The absence of breath itself.

All over Japan, people fell to their knees as the realization sank in: the flow of mana had stopped.

The most gifted mages tried to channel it, forcing energy into their circuits, but the void only deepened. A few collapsed instantly—drained by their own efforts, as if something inside them had been inverted. Others screamed as their sigils backfired, leaving trails of burnt glyphs across the ground.

By noon, hospitals overflowed. Mana withdrawal—a condition once thought impossible—left hundreds shaking, eyes glazed with exhaustion. In the upper districts, the wealthy scrambled to buy what remained of the bottled reserves, paying in gold, blood, and fear.

The stock exchange shut down by 1:00 p.m. Entire industries began to crumble before anyone understood the scale of the disaster.

And still, the sky stayed silent.

That evening, the first death was recorded.

A woman in her twenties, a mana technician, collapsed at her workstation. The doctors couldn’t save her—every healing charm failed. Her heart had simply stopped. When they examined her body, her mana reserves were empty. Completely dry.

By midnight, there were hundreds like her.

Across the city, candles replaced the pale blue glow of mana lamps. People stood on rooftops and looked up, waiting for the sky to relight. But the constellations themselves seemed dimmer, as if the stars had lost their connection to whatever force once fed them.

The world didn’t end with a scream. It ended with a sigh.

Three days later, a scientist from Kyoto published the first global report: Mana Regeneration Rate: 0.00%No fluctuation. No pulse. No chance of recovery.

Governments across the world declared martial law. MERC initiated the “Final Reserve Protocol,” restricting all remaining mana to official use only—military, hospitals, and research.

The rest of society was left to ration what remained.

But mana wasn’t just power. It was life. Every person was born with a reserve of it, stored deep in the body. Without it, illness spread faster. Wounds no longer healed as quickly. The world grew fragile.

And then came the black market—those who learned that mana could be taken from another person and stored like currency.

At first, it was whispers. Then thefts. Then murders.

People stopped asking why mana had stopped regenerating. They only asked how much was left.

In a back alley of Shinjuku, a group of children watched a street lamp flicker and die. The youngest one, a boy of about six, clutched an empty mana crystal—a birthday gift from his father. The faint blue glow inside it dimmed to gray, like an ember losing its light.

“Will it come back?” he asked.

His sister, older by a few years, didn’t answer. She just held his hand tighter.

In the distance, an old radio crackled to life, repeating the same words over and over:

“Please conserve energy. The reserves are limited. MERC will provide updates… please conserve…”

The boy looked up at the sky.Tokyo’s skyline—once alive with streaks of blue light—was now nothing but silhouettes.

He didn’t know it yet, but the world had just changed forever.

That night, the last active leyline in Japan flickered, then went dark.The scientists watching its readings described the moment as a “pulse of silence.”

For one second, everything stilled—the air, the earth, even the ocean seemed to stop moving.

And then, nothing.

No one knew it yet, but in that single instant, the age of infinite magic was gone.

Mana—the world’s lifeblood—had reached its end.

And with it, humanity’s illusion of eternity finally broke.

Even eternity runs dry.

In one quiet district of Shinjuku, a boy watched the flickering streetlights from the rooftop of a crumbling apartment building. 

His messy white hair clung to his forehead in the rain, and his vivid green eyes scanned the empty streets below as if searching for something unseen. 

He was small, no older than fourteen, yet there was a restlessness about him—a hunger, a defiance—that made the silence feel heavier, like the world itself was waiting to see what he would do next.